5-day work week!

Just thought I'd share a little oddity at work these days. The oddity would be my 4th 5-day work-week in a row!!! I'm sure some of you forget that I am still part-time at the casino where I currently work and will remain part-time for a very long while. However, I have not been getting "part-time" hours lately. In fact, I think this marks the first time I've had an entire four week period of ALL 5-day work weeks since I can remember.

The good news is that the Nevada minimum wage increased not too long ago, so my base pay is better meaning that all of these extra hours I'm getting mean a little more. The bad news is that the tokes at work keep going down and down and it seems there's no end in site. I think its been about 3 weeks since we had a $100+ toke day and mid-70 toke days during the middle of the week are now commonplace. I'm not complaining too much since I know we are still in the middle of the recession and the unemployment rate in Clark County is over 12% now. But it is getting a little annoying dealing to tables full of $5 minimum blackjack and craps players with very little to show for it! A $70 toke day due to very low volume of players and a lot of serene standing around isn't too bad. A $70 toke day dealing to jam-packed $5 blackjack tables and those absolute retards at the Casino War table is NOT worth it!

Oh, that reminds me, I have officially replaced Casino War at the top of my list of games that I HATE dealing, which now narrowly edges out Let-It-Ride. Mississippi Stud would probably be a close third if I dealt it more often, but its over in a pit that is populated by dealers who get the "good shifts", so I'm not over there very often. In case you don't know, Mississippi Stud is basically Let-It-Ride in reverse. It's a terrible game with a very high house edge! And to finish off the top four games that suck, I have to add the Big Six Wheel in there now. Most dealers hate dealing the Big Six Wheel because of the game itself, but I actually didn't mind it very much until recently. The reason is that they had the table off on its own as a little "island table" with no supervisors in site and, most importantly, it was faced directly toward the outside door. So whenever I'd be placed on the Big Wheel, I'd basically just stand around people-watching as wave upon wave of an eclectic mix of tourists walked by on the Strip. However, now they've moved the table so that it faces into the casino. Ironically, it now directly faces the War table. So no more people-watching for me whenever I'm on that table. Booooo!

One big annoying factor of my work-weeks have been the days-off! Sometimes I'll have two days off in a row for my weekend. However, this week I have the first day and last day off of the work-week. That meant I worked a few days in a row, had Friday as a lone day off, I'll work the next five in a row (Saturday-Wed) and then have the last day of the work-week off (Thursday). Then I'll work another 3 days after that before finally getting a two-day weekend! I gotta tell you that whenever I have a lone day off like that, it feels like I have NO days off at all! That one day just flies by (usually taken up by doing tasks like laundry, etc.) and then its right back to work!

Don't get me wrong. The opposite would be worse. I remember weeks while at Sunset Station where I'd work only 2 days during the week, and the a**holes would send me home early most of the time as well. So I guess complaining about more hours may be a little silly seeing as how thousands of Las Vegans are out everyday looking for jobs that just aren't there!

Getting back to the fuller schedule though. You may ask yourself why I'm getting more hours when we're in a recession and business has stagnated. The main reasons in my opinion are:
1. It's the summer and a lot of dealers are using vacation time. That means I'm working a lot of hours that would normally go to those on vacation. That also means the people on vacation get their cut of the daily tokes, which is a small reason why the tokes are low.
2. The Strip is just absolutely FULL of very cheap hotel rates right now. It's really not hard at all to find a $35 room on the Strip mid-week and its not too expensive on the weekends either. Unfortunately, that means Vegas is successfully drawing in very cheap crowds these days who populate the bottom of the casino food-chain. These people are getting great room rates at higher end properties but then walking to my casino for the cheap gaming. This is substantiating Chris and my theory that people have been getting dumber and dumber in the past year. I know that's not really true, but the people that are now drawn to Vegas are dumber, on average, than those of the past. Trust me, I know that sounds bad to say, but I am seeing it occur before my very eyes on a daily basis. More and more people are splitting tens on blackjack, playing like crazy on the War table (because it involves NO thought AT ALL), buying in for $30 on a $10 minimum table and expecting it to last a long time, throwing dice off the craps table EVERY OTHER DAMN ROLL, etc. I could go on, but please trust me, the casinos have to be surviving rather well on stupid gamblers these days.

The biggest drawback to having more dumb gamblers in are the fact that they generally don't win and thus, don't tip. I also think there are so many first-time gamblers in the casinos these days that even if they do win, they don't realize that dealers work for tips and don't even think about tipping.

I had a guy at the craps table betting the hardways for the dealer today. He would throw in our bets and say "hardways for the table". That's really not a very good way of booking a dealer bet, but we knew what he meant so we thanked him and put up our bets. When the guy next to him heard him say that, he ALSO threw in $4 and said the exact same thing, "hardways for the table". In hindsite, it was clear that he just wanted the hardways and just mimicked what he heard the other guy saying, not knowing in the slightest that these were dealer bets. So of course, a hard eight rolls, we pay ourselves $20 (because there were $2 on it for us, one from each guy) and the second guy wonders where the hell his money is for the hard eight. It's wasn't fun explaining to him that he made dealer bets and it REALLY WASN'T FUN when the pit boss told us to take $10 out of our payout and pay the player instead. Sure, this one instance isn't that big of deal, but eight hours of trying to babysit new players is getting a little old.

Alright, enough rambling, it's 2:30am which is my bed time. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their nice two-day weekend!! :-)